Home Truths Sophia Waugh

I don’t suppose any of us feels much more than twenty years younger than we actually are. It is only occasionally that something happens to make us realise quite how much the world has changed. It can be something quite mundane and seemingly insignificant, but it brings us up short.

Today it was the post. I was one of those children/teenagers who kept every letter I ever received, and even now I have the odd packet of letters hidden away, here and there. I wrote to my French friend in English, and she answered in French. I wrote to my siblings when I went to university and to my university friends when I began work in London. I have love letters, funny letters, begging letters, admonishing letters, all tucked away. Though I thin them out every now and again, I still can’t bring myself to chuck them all.

But who writes letters now? The odd thank-you letter is about as far as it goes, and even those seem to be superseded by emails. Until today. There were no bills, no flyers, no unasked-for catalogues. There were instead three handwritten envelopes.

Two of them were late Mother’s Day cards (we don’t pay an awful lot of mind to that particular festivity in this family). But it was the third which threw me back to the letters of my childhood.

It was written by a child in my last tutor group at my last school. Leaving my tutor group and my Year 10 girl group was my only hesitation in my determined march away from that establishment. I knew in my heart that both groups would mourn me for all of ten minutes, and then get on with the new teachers. A few in the tutor group were particularly close to my heart – a very naughty boy and a couple of unhappy girls.

There is something peculiarly heartbreaking about a truly unhappy twelve-year-old. However long I spend in teaching, I still can’t break myself of the belief that I will be the one who will somehow make it all better. The letter was from one of the unhappy twelve-yearolds. And in so many ways it reminded me of letters from schoolfriends. The over-indulgence in exclamation marks, the rambling chattiness, the details about people one no longer knew and could barely remember. But I remember her, and her letter brought joy to my heart. She wrote to tell me that she is happy. That she has found friends, and become used to her home situation, and is enjoying school. She told me the class missed me (which was polite and almost certainly no longer true) and she thanked me for, in the old cliché, ‘being there for her’ when she was unhappy.

I shall write back to her – a handwritten letter, in an envelope with a stamp – and I shall rejoice with her that the world has turned out all right. But she will probably never realise quite how moving that letter was to me. A verbal message, or even an email sent to my new school would not have had half the emotional punch. The arrival of the letter might have made me feel old in years, but it left me feeling young in experience.

Love letters, letters to friends, newsy letters, gossipy letters – even business letters – carry with them all the ritual of envelope-opening and paper-smoothing that gives them an extra layer of meaning. Had Macbeth dropped his wife an email saying he’d come in for a spot of promotion – and could she change the sheets in the spare room for his boss – it’s unlikely she’d have taken the time to brood about the future.

Letters are not the way back, they’re the way forward. Let’s start writing again.